Photo call: Denverite takes Broadway bow as ‘Phantom’ star

Elizabeth Welch takes her first bow on Broadway playing Christine in 'The Phantom of the Opera' (Photo courtesy Tim Welch).

Denver’s Elizabeth Welch performed for the first time Monday night as Christine in Broadway’s “The Phantom of the Opera.” Afterward, she described her feelings as, “Wide awake inside my biggest dream.” Much of her extended family flew to New York from around the country to see her big moment.

Welch, a University of Colorado-Boulder graduate who has performed at theaters across the metro area from the Town Hall Arts Center (“Kiss Me, Kate”) to the Arvada Center (“Les Miserables”) to the Denver Center’s Galleria Theatre (“The Taffetas”), is a member of Broadway’s “Phantom” ensemble and is also the Christine understudy.

Rudy and Lindsey,
Marian and I are extremely happy for you. We wish we could have been there with you. We are also extremely happy for Elizabeth. You have a hughe reason to be very proud. We love ya,
Unc Steve & Marian

Rudy and Lindsey,
Marian and I are extremely happy for you. We wish we could have been there with you. We are also extremely happy for Elizabeth. You have a hughe reason to be very proud. We love ya,
Unc Steve & Marian

Film & theater critic Lisa Kennedy likes to watch -- a lot. She also has a fondness for no-man’s lands, contested territories and Venn Diagrams. She believes the best place to live is usually on the border between two vibrant neighborhoods. Where better to apply this penchant for overlap and divergence than covering film and theater – two arts that owe so much to each other yet offer radically idiosyncratic pleasures? In another life, Kennedy was an Obie judge. In this one, she’s been a Pulitzer Prize judge in criticism, an Independent Spirit Award jurist and Colorado’s first member of the National Society of Film Critics.

More than a mash-up of the Running Lines and Diary of a Madmoviergoer blogs, Stage, Screen & In Between offers engaged takes on Colorado theater and film and pointed views on news from both coasts and both industries. Culture lovers, add your voices. Culture-makers, share your production journal entries and photos.